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Iowa Power Fund advances Iowa State development of clean energy
technologies

Researchers from Iowa State University, Frontline BioEnergy and
Hawkeye Energy Holdings are using a $2.37 million grant from the Iowa Power
Fund to develop new burner and catalyst technologies. The technologies will
use gas made from biomass to efficiently produce ethanol and provide clean,
renewable power for heating and drying equipment.

Wells to appear in "60 Minutes" story on eyewitness misidentification Sunday

Gary Wells, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Iowa State, will be featured on the CBS News show "60 Minutes" this Sunday, March 8 (6 p.m., KCCI, channel 8), in a package on eyewitness misidentification in criminal cases. Wells and ISU graduate student Deah Quinlivan published a paper related to the topic in the February Law and Human Behavior, the journal of the American Psychology-Law Society.

Student is passionate about dancing with bulls

When Lucas Moore talks about nimble footwork and all the right moves, he's not talking tango. He's talking bull.
The Iowa State University freshman is a bullfighter -- a type of rodeo clown that protects bull riders who dismount or are bucked off. The bullfighter distracts the bull before it hooks or tramples the cowboy.

ISU human sciences dean search narrowed to one

The committee searching for the next dean of the College of Human
Sciences at Iowa State University has unanimously recommended one
finalist to move forward in the process.
That candidate is College of Human Sciences Interim Dean Pam White,
who also is a University Professor of food science and human nutrition.

ReCAP report finds state per capita retail sales are down 4.0 percent
since 2000

Iowa's retail per capita sales (taxable sales and not total
retail sales) have gone down 4 percent between 2000-08, according to the new
Retail Sales Analysis & Report for Fiscal Year 2008 by Iowa State
University's Regional Capacity Analysis Program (ReCAP), authored by ISU
economist Meghan O'Brien.

President Gregory Geoffroy and the other regents university presidents
met with the Iowa Legislature's Education Appropriations Subcommittee
March 3 to discuss the effects of reduced state appropriations to the universities.

ISU research examines how plants produce high-energy storage organs

Avoid self-handicapping at work, advises an Iowa State management
professor

An Iowa State management professor advises against
self-handicapping on the job. James McElroy, a University Professor of
Management at ISU; and J. Michael Crant, a management professor at the
University of Notre Dame, published a study last year that found the more
times an individual turned to self-handicaps, the less credible those
handicaps became to their co-workers -- particularly if the project
eventually failed.

Iowa State researchers receive awards for Parkinson's Disease study

Two researchers in the Iowa Center for Advanced Neurotoxicology (ICAN) at Iowa State University have received awards totaling more than $4 million from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The awards represent innovative approaches to funding biomedical research in Parkinson's Disease by NINDS.

Undergraduates will present their research projects at annual Capitol event

From the antimicrobial effect of common plant extracts to the upper-air flow patterns of floods in the Central Plains, 23 Iowa State undergraduate students have lots to talk about when they present their research to legislators and others during the fourth annual "Research in the Capitol." The event will be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday, March 9, in the rotunda of the State Capitol building in Des Moines.

Four finalists named in ISU engineering dean search

Two state universities collaborate to improve human and animal eyesight

Iowa State University's College of Veterinary Medicine recently installed the newest generation of retinal imaging equipment for examining the eyes of animal patients. The research is intended to help human patients and animal patients as well.

In a study of 95 fifth-grade girls from three Oregon elementary
schools and their favorite TV shows, psychologists from Iowa State and
Linfield College found that TV ratings don't accurately reflect the
aggressive content found in shows popular among children -- even
cartoons.

Michele Norris, an award-winning journalist and co-host of
National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," will speak at Iowa State on
Friday, March 6, serving as both the keynote speaker at the 10th annual Iowa
State Conference on Race and Ethnicity (ISCORE) and the Carrie Chapman Catt
Center's Spring 2009 Mary Louise Smith Chair. Norris will deliver a free,
public talk titled "Race, Gender and the Future of Leadership in
America," at 4 p.m. in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

Iowa State astronomer to study stars with data from NASA's Kepler
mission

Steve Kawaler, an Iowa State University professor of physics
and astronomy, plans to witness the launch of NASA's Kepler mission in early
March. The mission's space telescope will advance Kawaler's studies of the
interiors of stars. And it could find dozens of earth-like planets in our
galaxy.

Chimp reunited with mom

Iowa State anthropologist Jill Pruetz recently helped reunite a 9-month-old chimpanzee who'd been taken by hunters with her mother in Senegal. The captors of baby Aimee planned to sell the chimp, but Pruetz' field assistant Johnny Kante talked them into giving her back. Pruetz, Kante and field assistant Michel Keita reintroduced Aimee to the community of savanna chimpanzees at the Fongoli research site -- producing a reunion with her mother Tia. The event was captured on video (courtesy of National Geographic) by Pruetz, who tells the story here.

In the news

Environmental studies enrollment soars

The New York Times

Iowa State has seen the number of students enrolled in environmental studies and environmental science soar 50 percent since fall 2003. "I had this sense that environmental issues got a lot more press -- or maybe more effective press -- in the last four to five years," says William Crumpton of ISU's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology.

Buy local: Food tastes better, and it's fresher

Albany Democrat Herald

Locally grown food can be produced four times more efficiently, uses four times less fuel and emits four times less carbon dioxide than items produced on the global market, says Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State.